Wow! I like what I see. I agree the transition from the stilts to residential component will need to be worked out but as a concept, and a detailed one at that, I'm blown away. It feels like there is a change afoot when it comes to developing downtown and the new crop of tall buildings, most notably the Shangri-La, will go far to foster additional tall buildings and, hopefully, more daring architecture.

I was thinking, on the underbelly/ass/crotch (whatever you wanna call it) of the residential stilted component, they could have some sort of murial or have a giant LED screen flashing images:

For comparisson's sake, the Sutton Place Hotel is 232 feet tall.

btw, thanks for posting this rag.

Which is about the same size as the hotel and office portions as far as I can tell.

Anyways, I think to have the stilts meet the residential they should make them align with the sides of the residential tower up until they have to turn in (rounding the corners of course) giving them more of a triangle shaped cross section than what appears to be an oval right now.

Also, I know I've always been a fan of increasing the height of buildings in Vancouver... hell, i've said we should tear down the marine building and Teresen in the name of height and density... but I think we can all agree here that now that there is a possible way to defeat the view cones, why not finally reach for the sky? This building is right in the middle of the city, and on some fairly high-up ground... why not make it the current peak of Vancouver? I'd love to see something over 700-800 feet.

Again, I say we should lobby to help get this building through the UDP and inspire change in both architectural quality and the general opinion of height in our city. In doing so I think we should also lobby the city to allow this thing to go damn near as high as the developers are willing to make it go (within reasonable boundaries).

i was hoping for the museum to be bigger. it looks like it's also about 3 storeys, like the retail component.....though i would think it's actually about 2-storeys of museum assuming that they want more air space for exhibits that require more space.

raggedy, do you have more info on the museum? the square footage?

at least we're finally getting a real facility for the Vancouver Museum. Vanier Park just doesn't do it.

I'd expect they would build the base towers first, then the stilts, then put in temporary steel members from between the towers to support the transfer beam. Once that is done I'd suspect they would complete ground level retail.

I would also venture to guess that they may employ the use of an aircrane when building the residential portion, as they would have basically nothing to anchor a crane too for the first few stories.

Sorry not much further info at the moment, but I think the last I heard it won't necessarily be the Vancouver Museum... for now it is just sort of generic 'museum' space, though the Vancouver Museum was thought of as a possible tenant for the concept. I don't think the Vancouver Museum has been approached with this idea yet, if they ever are.

Also, keep in mind that this is only 1 of 3 potential site plans... the other two keeping within general view cone policy.

^^Yeah no stilts. I think one of the other two concepts is based upon remaining below the view cone, and the second is based upon adding some bonus density through density transfers etc and getting it a bit above the view cone limit that way, but still nowhere near 600ft.

Sorry not much further info at the moment, but I think the last I heard it won't necessarily be the Vancouver Museum... for now it is just sort of generic 'museum' space, though the Vancouver Museum was thought of as a possible tenant for the concept. I don't think the Vancouver Museum has been approached with this idea yet, if they ever are.

Also, keep in mind that this is only 1 of 3 potential site plans... the other two keeping within general view cone policy.

It would be a great site for any museum. Maybe the HR Macmillan Space Centre? If you used your imagination, it could look like a rocket. (but they would mean they would lose a lot of facilities from the Vanier Park building like the laser show theatre and the observatory). I've always thought the space centre should be part of Science World.